Painting Death

by Tim Parks

  ‘You mean you don’t know any academic murderers? Or murderous academics?’

  ‘Very witty,’ the director nodded. For the first time a real smile curled one corner of his mouth. ‘It’s not an accomplishment people normally include in their curriculum.’

  Morris was now yearning to tell him: You won’t find anyone more experienced than me in this field, Dottor Volpi. For a killer of a show on killing you need a man who’s killed and killed and killed again. Instead he said: ‘As I recall James Bradburne had the Money and Beauty show curated by some hack English journalist, not an art historian at all, what’s his name?’

  ‘No!’ The director now made a very vigorous objection: ‘No, you are quite wrong there. The Money and Beauty show, Signor Duckworth, which to my mind had very considerable shortcomings, was nevertheless curated, to all intents and purposes, I can assure you, by the highly reputed Florentine art historian and academic, Ludovica Sebregondi. Ted Parkes just wrote a few pathetically disrespectful captions. Bradburne brought him in, no doubt, as so-called vice curator, to catch the interest of the Anglo-Saxon press, to whom we are obliged, I’m afraid, to kowtow in the hope of attracting an international clientele. A clever move promotionally, but hardly good for the show as such.’

  ‘Ted Parkes?’

  ‘Sorry, Tom Parkes,’ the director corrected himself. ‘One of the many Americans making a sleazy living out of pretending to know something about Italy and generally spitting in the bowl he slops from.’

  Morris was surprised at this level of animosity, though presumably its real target was Bradburne, a museologist, Morris felt, of real charisma and hence an envied competitor. Or perhaps Volpi just disliked Americans, or foreigners in general. In any case Morris sensed at once that he must second Volpi’s grudges if ever he was to have the man on his side.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he agreed. ‘Like the hack who wrote the attack on Verona that I replied to in the British papers, what’s his name, Anderton-Dodds.’

  ‘Quite, Signor Duckworth, there are dozens of them. Tobias Joyce is another. The one who wrote The Black Hole of Italy.’

  ‘Unreadable,’ Morris agreed, having heard only distant rumours of the tome. What was the point of reading about Italy when you lived the beautiful nightmare every day?

  ‘They just play to the Northern League’s position,’ Volpi went on, giving himself away entirely now. Morris was delighted.

  ‘All the same, Dottor Volpi,’ he said, ‘I suggest we take a leaf out of Bradburne’s book. Make me a pin-up curator, as it were, or vice curator, to excite the foreign press, and put me alongside a scrupulously respectable art historian who will make it an excellent show. Yourself, for example. It would be such an honour to work with you. I can’t tell you.’

  Volpi seemed to be aware he had said too much. He settled his bulk.

  ‘Signor Duckworth, one doesn’t curate a show in one’s own museum.’

  ‘Does etiquette prevent that?’

  ‘Some sort of hierarchy and separation of roles needs to be preserved, don’t you think?’ Dottor Volpi frowned. ‘Am I right, Signorina Wuzid?’

  ‘Zuwaid,’ she corrected.

  ‘Le chiedo scusa.’ The director’s eyes lingered on the young woman a little longer than they ought to have. Samira accepted the gaze without embarrassment.

  ‘Actually it’s Tim Parkes,’ she said then. ‘He lives here in Verona.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s Tim. Not Tom or Ted. He’s English not American.’

  ‘Oh Parkes.’

  ‘I don’t think we really need to worry about the scribbler’s Christian name,’ Morris rebuked her gently. It was the first foot she’d put wrong all afternoon. What was the point of showing up the director on such an irrelevance?

  ‘Signor Duckworth.’

  Announcing the name, the director placed both hands on his desktop and with awesome slowness levered himself to his feet. Upright, he was rather smaller, or at least shorter, than one would have expected, and as a result even rounder. ‘Let us proceed as follows. I will ask Professor Zolla, the museum’s resident art historian, to approach the appropriate foreign museums with requests for loans of, er, some, just some, mind, of the paintings you indicate. Only the paintings. In the remote event that we do get a sufficient number of positive responses, I shall allow the show to go ahead with yourself and Zolla, who is an excellent and meticulous academic, as co-curators. If, on the other hand, as I expect, we get refusals across the board, then we shall have no choice but to shelve the project.’

  Morris jumped to his feet to take a hand he thought had been extended but that Volpi now tried to withdraw. Perhaps he had only reached out to steady himself on the desk. In any event, Morris grabbed it, squeezed it and held it tight. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said warmly. ‘That’s very generous. However, Dottore, there is one important detail you are unaware of.’

  The director waited, his eye straying to Samira who had also got to her feet and was wriggling down the hem of her dress.

  ‘I own all the paintings.’

  The director was too bewildered to reply.

  ‘Only a half-dozen are originals, of course. But I have had all the rest professionally copied, in the original dimensions, with identical frames.’

  Having made the very considerable effort of fighting himself to his feet, the director now slumped down in his chair again. Morris stood over him, as David over the defeated Goliath.

  ‘So where museums are unwilling to give us the originals,’ he said cheerfully, ‘we might, er, integrate the collection with copies. So much art is a question of copying, isn’t it? All the crucifixions, the Madonnas, scores of Holofernes, scores of Salomes. Often four or five versions of the same painting by the same artist. Or by other artists, imitating this, altering that. We could make it a theme of the show: spot the copy. Like a whodunit. Copying is a kind of murder in the end, don’t you think? Killing the original with its double. Killing the first flourish with the follow-up. So the art critics say. Let’s call their bluff !’

  He paused and smiled radiantly. ‘Let’s do something really different is what I say, Dottor Volpi. Something that will make people sit up and talk about us, about Castelvecchio, about the wonderful city of Verona. The art press worldwide would go crazy.’

  The Duckworth Foundation would be global news.

  ‘Signor Duckworth,’ the director eventually said, ‘you are mad.’

  Morris made a small bow: ‘Morris Arthur Duckworth at your service,’ he said, and taking Samira’s arm with ostentatious intimacy, he showed himself out.

  Chapter Five

  IT GRIEVED MORRIS THAT he couldn’t show Samira The Art Room. In the flat in San Zeno she sat astride him, rocking gently.

  ‘Caro,’ she whispered. She liked to lean forward and trace a finger along his scars.

  From mouth to eye the nerves sang. ‘Sammy,’ Morris responded.

  He wanted her to see that wonderful Stuck and of course Bonnaud’s magnificent Salome with the Baptist’s head beside the lovely lady, still very much part of the conversation on its golden plate.

  ‘Darling,’ she sighed. ‘I’m so close.’

  Then she would realise that Morris was much, much more than a dull businessman. Or even a generous lover. Morris was one who moved between the living and the dead, between experience and art.

  ‘Let me keep you company,’ he murmured, pushing gently.

  The problem was not so much Antonella, or the children. There were always moments when he could rely on their being out of the house. The maid was trickier, since Maddalena’s loyalty to Antonella was absolute. But in the end Morris could have got round her too. The real hurdle was Massimina. The dear dead girl had made it plain that though she understood Morris’s needs in this department, she absolutely would not countenance the Arab mistress on her territory. ‘And you must say Mimi when you climax,’ she insisted, rather coquettishly.

  ‘It’s been nearl
y thirty years, cara,’ he had reminded her.

  ‘I’m still exactly as I was,’ she told him. ‘The years don’t pass for me, Morrees.’

  ‘Sam-mimi,’ he gasped, ‘Sam-mimi.’

  The girl fell forward on his chest and he circled her with his arms.

  ‘What a cute little nickname,’ she whispered.

  Morris had met Samira at the university. As head of a company that offered frequent internships to local students, he had been invited on Careers Day to say a few words about what he looked for in a new recruit.

  ‘A willingness to do anything the company requires, however menial on the one hand or intellectually challenging on the other,’ he said grandly. ‘And a talent for thinking outside the box.’

  In reality Morris mostly had his interns phoning through lapsed client files, making coffee and photocopies, shredding oceans of incriminating correspondence and queuing in public offices to deposit and retrieve the documents that established the official version of events. All for very low pay or none at all, since these kids were usually from families who had far more than Morris Duckworth had ever had at their age. It was experience they needed, not money. But when someone particularly smart and personable turned up, male or female, then Morris might decide to take the child under his wing and let them work by his side for three or even six months. It cheered life up and gave them a chance to see how hectic things could be at the top. ‘You’ll never want to be successful after this,’ he would joke.

  On occasion, over the years, such arrangements had led to a little affair or two, to the mutual benefit, Morris was sure, of both parties. In fact, Morris had been rather scandalised at first to discover how natural and even ordinary these respectable young Catholic girls found the situation. Like ducks to water, he would mutter to himself. Or Duckworths to blood. He laughed and would have feared for his daughter, if Massimina Duckworth wasn’t so evidently woven from a stronger moral fibre than the girls her father bedded. In any case Morris would have strictly forbidden her from taking part in any such shady internship.

  Scruples aside, it would have been hard to imagine a more ideal situation: the official work relationship gave a cover for being seen in the company of a charming young woman, while the strictly circumscribed duration of the internships put a sensible sell-by date on any developing intimacy. Samira was in fact the first mistress he had held on to after the relationship with Fratelli Trevisan had terminated. This was partly, Morris sensed, because she was also the last of this string of lovers. There would be no more young interns in his bed. It wasn’t so much that at fifty-five the managing director of Fratelli Trevisan felt too old to seduce, just that over the years what had started as excitement and evasion had become routine. He knew the ropes too well. All of a sudden everything in his life had to change, Morris realised. He was moving into a new phase. The show was part of it. And so was Samira.

  Now she padded about the flat in just her tee shirt and panties, cleaning up in the bathroom, making one of her herb teas in the kitchen. What attracted Morris, beyond the obvious physical charms, were the young woman’s poverty, her foreignness and her healthy opportunism. She had milked Morris for all he was worth, in rent and clothes and even jewels, and he had been happy to oblige, knowing that this generosity exonerated him from any responsibility in her regard. It was even encouraging that she had this charming and rather severe younger brother Tarik to keep an eye out and hold her in check, otherwise there were occasions when you felt Samira might have got seriously out of line.

  She rolled a cigarette with a little dope. Morris, who never smoked cigarettes, and who actually believed that smoking, like obesity, was a weakness and a sin, nevertheless allowed himself a couple of leisurely puffs in her company.

  ‘By the way, I found three more killing pictures for you to go and see,’ she said now. Sitting very erect behind the glass table, there was something of the pharaoh about her, a kind of lush rigidity which Morris immensely appreciated and sometimes wondered if he might not be falling in love with.

  ‘Another Death of Absalom. That’s in Conegliano. I’ve got the details at the office. One Moses slaying the Egyptian. In Ca’ di David I think. Pretty rare. And a martyrdom of San Bartolomeo. I can’t remember where that was. Ilasi?’

  ‘Excellent.’ Morris loved the fact that she kept thinking business despite the intimate interlude.

  ‘Not famous painters, I don’t think. But the catalogues are such a mess. Scribbled file cards bundled into cupboards twenty years ago.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Get the details and we’ll go and look. Be a nice day out.’

  ‘Morris!’ she smiled and cocked her head to one side. ‘I’m learning so much with you. I could take an exam in Christian culture!’

  ‘Sammy. I’m glad! You could be St Sammy!’

  There were times, Morris thought, when having an affair was far more a virtue than a vice.

  But now his young mistress was frowning.

  ‘About those requests for the paintings, though. For the show.’

  ‘At Castelvecchio?’

  ‘How can you be sure that fat pig will actually make them? I think he’ll just wait a while, then pretend they were all turned down.’

  Morris hadn’t thought of that, but didn’t want to show it.

  ‘I’ll ask for the requests to be copied to me as co-curator.’

  ‘He really didn’t like you, you know.’

  But Morris was feeling marvellously confident.

  ‘It’s irrelevant. His hands are tied. The government is making big cuts in its cultural budget. The museum needs the money I’ve offered. What’s more’—Morris took a deep puff on her cigarette and beamed through his dizziness—‘it’s a brilliant idea for a show. Isn’t it? People will come in droves.’

  She smiled. ‘It is a wonderful idea, Morris.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Obviously Titian’s big Cain and Abel must come right at the entrance, the first thing you see as you walk in, for maximum impact: the murder that set history in motion.’

  ‘Moslems have that story too,’ she said.

  Morris sensed an idea coming, but had to make an effort to formulate it. The dope seemed to have made his body lighter.

  ‘Which, when you think about it,’ he said, ‘was largely God’s fault.’

  Blowing out smoke, Samira twisted her pretty mouth into a question; it was the expression of the smart student asking a charismatic teacher to explain.

  ‘Cain was a tiller of the ground,’ Morris reflected, hardly knowing himself what he meant. ‘Abel was a shepherd. As I remember. They made an offering to God, Cain of his crops, Abel of a lamb. Sort of vegetarian versus carnivore. God respected Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s. That’s the word in the Bible. Respect. Then when vegetarian Cain asked what he’d done wrong, God wouldn’t say. You get the feeling it was just because Cain was a crop farmer and not a shepherd. Simple as that. He didn’t have red meat to offer. I mean, the way someone is born poor and someone else rich. Or someone black and someone white. God respects one and not the other. No wonder the man was resentful.’

  The girl watched him intently.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing they never put in the captions of course.’

  She nodded.

  ‘But they should, they really should. If you know the story, it changes the image. Maybe Cain was right.’

  She folded her arms and sat straight-backed and perfectly still at the glass table, a faint smile on her lips. Behind her was the kitchen corner where she cooked her Arab soups and stews and on the walls to each side the patterned hangings in shades of earth and orange that she liked so much. Morris felt pleasantly bohemian.

  ‘Did Tarik tell you I asked him to get involved? To write some captions. I thought it would be great to get an Arab point of view. Unusual.’

  She shook her head, watching. It was extraordinary how willing she was to hang on his every word.

  ‘Unfortunately, he refused. To be honest, he seemed
a bit hostile.’

  Samira smiled. ‘I’ll try to bring him round. It would do him good. But sometimes my little brother thinks he should avoid all involvement, you know, with the West.’

  ‘Hardly possible if he goes to the LSE.’

  ‘He thinks he can learn something like economics without compromising himself, then take the knowledge back home, uncontaminated.’

  ‘I can sympathise with that,’ Morris said. ‘By the way, did he like the coat I bought?’

  ‘He’s wearing it all the time,’ she smiled. ‘He loves leather. But he’ll never say thank you. He’s too proud.’

  ‘I get that with my son,’ Morris agreed. He was on the sofa, his head thrown back, arms stretched out on the upholstery. They sat quietly for a minute and more. Morris couldn’t remember ever having sat like this with a woman before. It was different from the sort of silence he sometimes enjoyed with Antonella where both were simply getting on with their own thoughts as if the other weren’t present at all. Here on the contrary there was a strange reaching out, from both sides, across the half-dark of the unlit room at evening. She smiled and smoked and looked at him intently from behind the table, as if something important were happening.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Morris suddenly wanted to know.

  Samira leaned forward: ‘I was thinking of a game.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘What if people going to the show had to solve a murder, find clues in paintings that would solve a mystery? Who did a murder or where a body has been hidden.’

  Morris was taken aback. He tried to think, but felt disoriented. Dope was definitely a vice. ‘That’s brilliant,’ he agreed. ‘That’s a wonderful idea. We can fit it in with spotting copies and originals.’ He frowned. Why did he feel disconcerted? ‘The only thing is I doubt whether Volpi would come on board. He seems hopelessly conservative. There’s nothing worse than a southerner in the northern provinces.’

  ‘He’s another thing I was thinking about,’ Samira chuckled. Her voice was deeper when she laughed. She lit another cigarette and sat back, pushing her dark hair from her forehead. Near naked as she was, there was a triumphant womanhood about her. She was full of life and enjoying it.